


A Single Pawprint

by Kaz_Langston



Series: Steel & Shadows [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Mute Jaskier | Dandelion, Not Canon Compliant, Past Rape/Non-con, Slave Jaskier | Dandelion, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporarily mute Jaskier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27565954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaz_Langston/pseuds/Kaz_Langston
Summary: A shortfall of a hundred crowns has Jaskier, terrified and mute after 6 years of slavery, handed over to a witcher in part payment.The first few days of A Fox Treads Silently, from Jaskier’s confused, scared point of view.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Steel & Shadows [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014918
Comments: 11
Kudos: 376





	A Single Pawprint

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the overwhelming support for A Fox Treads Silently, the response has been incredible. 
> 
> **SPOILERS / Content warnings**
> 
> Suicidal thoughts / sort of suicide attempt - Jaskier holds a knife to his own throat when he realises there’s no point threatening Geralt.
> 
> References to past rape - Occasional non explicit references, Jaskier stripping naked to sleep and expecting Geralt to sleep with him, bracing himself for unwelcome touches.

A hundred crowns. It would stretch to nearly a fortnight of good food, enough wine to get exceedingly drunk at any half decent tavern two nights running, or cover the cost of a pair of silken trousers like those he’d worn once upon a time. And it is, apparently, the worth of a worn down slave, bruised and thin and useless.

Jaskier thinks he should cry, or run, or scream. Instead there’s just the familiar numb obedience, his vision tunnelled down to almost nothing, his mind fogged and slow. The collar saps his will to escape, but even without it the fear would have him frozen like some small cornered animal.

His thighs are spread familiarly, uncomfortably wide around muscle, though the rhythm in his ears is heavy hooves on the road, not slapping flesh; he sits astride a horse, a well bred rouncey, steady and broad backed but with the promise of power in her haunches. He feels like some spoil of war, though there’s been no battle for him to lose, no glorious victory, no ruinous defeat.

His hands shake, as they are wont to do, clawing at the leather of the saddle to steady his swaying body.

Witcher, his hollow mind tells him.

Death bringer, butcher, master.

Witcher, witcher, witcher.

*-*-*-*-*

It’s full dark before they stop, and his legs nearly give way beneath him as he slides from the horse.

Jaskier can hardly hear the witcher move around the clearing, and keeps as still as his quivering limbs will allow, not wanting to bump into his new master and risk his wrath.

He can’t see - it’s dark, beyond dark, a rich thick velvet against his dulled senses - and the order to collect firewood makes him jump. When he looks in the direction of the rough voice there’s a low growl, and after a moment’s frozen terror he drops to his knees to scrabble across the ground, ignoring the bite of a rock against his knee.

He’s barely gathered anything, a scant handful of twigs, when there’s a dull clatter beside him, a tumble of branches, and then a blinding light beneath an outstretched hand. He throws himself backwards, away from the sudden inferno, heart pounding in his throat. The witcher laughs, low and curling against the crackle of firewood, and says something that’s lost over the roaring in his ears.

Magic. Of course. He’s heard the stories, same as anyone, maybe more than most, and once upon a time had been fascinated with them. Stories of butchery and murder and monsters, with nary a word from the witchers themselves, and he’d been convinced there was another side to the tales.

As he cringes away from the fire the white haired witcher towers over him. All he can think of is everything that’s been done to him by humans without a shred of power, and now he’s at the mercy of a man - more than a man, less than a man - with two swords and the strength of a battalion and magic with it.

He’s known it abstractly for a long time, but it coalesces, a thin shard of clarity in the white haze.

He’s going to die.

The witcher will toy with him until he outlives his feeble use, and then he will get the sword. Steel, of course, as the rumours said it had been for his wayward great grandfather so many decades before. Though silver would do the job just as well, he supposes. His blood will spill either way.

His hands are numb.

The witcher tries to make him speak. He doesn’t know how to tell him it’s no good, that the mage may as well have cut his tongue from his head. His skills aren’t in speaking, not any more.

After a little while there’s a bedroll, and a rich pelt spread across it. He knows this; strips himself naked bar the collar and curls under the fur, back to his white haired master.

He stays there for a minute, trembling hands tucked between his thighs as he gnaws at his lip, but the sounds from behind him settle down into silence.

The witcher is the other side of the fire, settled on a pile of leaves, cloak pulled around his shoulders. That doesn’t make sense. That isn’t... how it works.

A querying sound breaks loose from his throat and makes the witcher turn. He holds the fur back, shows himself ready, and tries not to shiver.

The witcher looks surprised, but pads over on silent feet, sliding down next to him.

He holds himself tense and still, but no broad hand snakes over his hip or slips between his legs. The witcher’s breaths are slow and steady against his skin for long hours before sleep takes him.

*-*-*-*-*

His legs hurt, and the cold bites at his nose and fingers. The steel collar struggles to warm to his body’s feeble heat, a thin line of ice around his neck.

It had been a relief to scrub himself clean, his skin unfamiliar without the film of dirt, but despite a warm meal the chill of the river has settled bone deep.

His fingers tremble as he touches the fur around his shoulders. It’s very soft.

It takes everything he has to let go of it and fumble in the saddlebag beneath his skinny leg to find the glint of steel he’d spotted, fighting against the lethargy of the collar. It aches, and his mind blurs. 

The witcher half turns with his jaw clenched, spitting something sharp edged and biting, but Jaskier’s fingers are wrapped around the leather handle and he squirms to get it free. There’s a slap to his thigh, more surprise than pain, and it cuts through the fog and spurs him on. A moment later he has a stolen dagger in his belt, and the promise of it pulses in his breast.

Jaskier waits until there’s trail stew warming his belly once again, filling in the cracks, seeping up inside him, and chooses his moment when the witcher turns away.

The collar fights him, his blood roaring in his ears. For a brief, glorious instant, he thinks he’ll have his freedom, denied him for so long. But though the witcher stays well back, big hands high and open, his golden eyes are calm and soft edged, his voice low and almost amused. “You won’t do much damage with that, lad. I’m a witcher, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Jaskier knows fear, and there’s not an ounce of fear in that gaze.

“Put it down, don’t want you hurting yourself.”

Oh. There’s an idea. 

The knife is sharp. The white press of it against his throat is hot, hotter when he feels a wet drool of blood. He takes a breath, his last, and closes his eyes, the witcher too far to stop him, a new escape within reach.

And then–

His body and his mind are suddenly not his own, even less than they had been. The knife tumbles from his fingers, spitting up a line of dry earth as it lands. 

Sit, the witcher says, and he sits. Hold out your wrists, the witcher says, and his hands raise into the autumn air, to be tied with broken leather reins.

He would sob, if he could, if there was anything in him still to break. Instead his mind drifts.

Sleep, the witcher says, and he sleeps.

*-*-*-*-*

The witcher doesn’t seem angry, when they wake. There’s something heavy in his face, unguarded in the softness of morning, as the yellow eyes blink open and focus in an instant.

“If I release you, will you run?”

No. No, not any more. He had enough in him for that one attempt, for the knife and the threat, but the collar is too heavy on him, body and soul, for another try. He won’t run.

When his wrists are unbound Jaskier silently does what he can to be useful, tucking things away in bags, nudging dirt over the remains of the fire. Perhaps if he shows his use in small ways, the witcher won’t need to– he’ll be left alone. Not that he'd have any choice, not with the man's impossible strength and that awful ability to control his body at will. Just the memory of it makes him shudder.

Camp broken, the witcher takes something from a saddlebag and rips it in two, the enormous muscles in his arms barely swelling, and summons Jaskier to him.

He can’t make himself move, and the witcher scowls and stalks over.

Jaskier expects a blow, a slap, something to remind him of his place at his master’s feet. Instead as he closes his eyes in a futile defence there’s something tucked around his neck, brief pressure against his throat, rough fabric against his skin.

The witcher lifts himself to his horse’s back with no effort. Jaskier touches his throat, where the solid line of steel is covered by rough fabric. It’s strange to not feel the metal against his skin.

There’s a hand in front of his face - pink and white scars, palms more callus than not - and when he takes it he’s hauled up onto the saddle.

Jaskier hasn’t slept properly since Mikolaj handed him over, and as the last of the autumn leaves tumble around them he finds the roll of the horse’s walk lulls him into unconsciousness, slumping against the witcher’s broad back. He smells faintly of sweat, and onion, and leather. Spices, underneath that. It’s not entirely unpleasant.

He wakes with a jerk and a snort, and the horse baulks underneath them, but the witcher’s hand on his thigh keeps him from falling. “Easy, lad,” he says. Jaskier wipes drool from his mouth, and the hand lifts from his thigh, reappearing with a waterskin. He drinks, grateful that this new master doesn’t seem to want to withhold water, doesn’t seem to want to make him beg for what he needs, though who knows what will happen when they reach the witcher’s winter home and his brothers.

They dismount and walk for lunch, though the horse, the reins and the witcher box him in, if he’d been interested in running. Bread and hard cheese is pressed into his hand. It’s plain but decent food, unblemished by rot, the same as all the fare the witcher’s given him. After that, an apple, soft and sweet. He eats it down to a skeletal core and licks his fingers clean.

*-*-*-*-*

Another day drifts by before they reach a town on the banks of a wide river, another night of lying naked and fearful next to the witcher, braced for a touch that doesn’t come.

The mountain range has grown along the horizon from a thin spine to an oppressive presence above them. They have to be the Blue Mountains, or the Dragon Mountains; it’s too cold in their shadow to be anywhere near the Korath desert. He thinks it might be nice to feel the desert wind on his face, rather than the ice-laced bite of winter.

It’s market day, loud and busy, the stalls still heavy despite the poor harvest. The horse - Roach, he’s learned by now - is steady as they creep through the crowds.

There’s music, high notes against the rumble of the crowd. Pipes, dancing and cheerful. He scrapes his thumbnail over his fingertips, catches the thick skin where he once branded himself a musician.

The witcher pulls Roach to a halt and dismounts, careful not to catch Jaskier with his heel.

He’s not trusted, which is fair, and the witcher keeps Roach’s reins in one gloved fist. It’s nice to sit fully in the saddle, rather than perch on the bedroll and saddlebags, and his legs are thankful for the rest.

The market’s busy, but somehow people melt away as they approach, leaving a clear path. A dark haired woman looks up at him, the agony of indecision twisting her features, and then looks at Geralt. She turns away, pity writ large across her face.

Jaskier keeps his eyes on the saddle after that.

The witcher doesn’t take long, returning with a handful of thick woollen fabric that goes straight into the saddlebags before lifting his head to cast around the market. 

The scent of fresh baked bread rises over the miasma of humanity, and Jaskier’s belly growls. He swallows, mouth watering, and bites at his lip as Roach ambles forwards. Three days of food have reminded his body that hunger has a purpose.

A leather clad hand appears in his peripheral vision, pinched around a sweetcake. Looking up, the witcher’s heavy golden eyes are fixed on him.

He takes the sweetcake with a trembling hand, and the witcher turns back to the baker’s stall, bartering for bread and hardtack. It seems they have a journey ahead of them.

The pastry is sweet and rich, dissolving on his tongue as the pipes call merrily above the crowd.


End file.
